


A Fair Man

by Evilawyer



Category: Foyle's War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-15
Updated: 2010-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilawyer/pseuds/Evilawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The characteristics of a good man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fair Man

**Author's Note:**

> Time frame: "The French Drop"

The Director of Operations, the high and mighty Col. James Wintringham had informed her, is far too busy to play host. She, on the other hand, as Section Head and second in command, was surely sufficiently versatile to fit the task into her roster of duties. Besides, she already knew Foyle, something that James inexplicably appeared to think made her the best candidate to keep an eye on him. Therefore, James maintained, the wisest course of action was for her to show Special Operations Executive's guest to his overnight accommodations. She could take the opportunity to plant a little misinformation in his ear, to befuddle him with cooperation and throw him off the scent, as it were. Obviously, James hadn't listened to a word she said about Foyle's intellect and tenacity when he'd decided to ignore her advice and let Foyle in.

James was proving himself to be completely incapable of reading people. James was proving himself to be a twat.

She'd thought she could prevail on Stafford, being as how he'd been in the police, or Komorowski, who was ever polite and who so clearly wanted to talk to someone, anyone, on the outside, about the very little that he thought he knew, but they had been busy carrying out very important, late-night assignments that Wintringham had given them. So it fell to her to show Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle to his evening's billet. Now, it seems, it falls to her to call him down to breakfast.

She's never watched a man sleep. Not that it's so pretty a sight that she regrets never having done so.

There was one young man she'd known during her time at university. The two of them would talk for hours about the nature of law. He had always steadfastly maintained that law was fixed, or at least frozen in its time, and could not be ignored or manipulated, which left her to support the contention that law was fluid in its immutability and therefore ripe for being molded into whatever was needed. She had always, she had come to realize with age, had a rather jaded and jaundiced view of law. She would have been comfortable defending either position, but her friend had always defended the sanctity of law with the unwavering dedication of a zealot. Their debates often became quite heated, sometimes even degenerating into the verbal equivalent of a brawl, complete with uncomplimentary name-calling. Underneath their academic bickering, though, they shared a belief that, whatever could be said or made of Man's Laws, Justice is neither sweet nor nurturing but is always fair and always deserving of respect.

Consequently, and despite their differences, they'd been friends. Even though his occasional forays into rudeness sometimes left them not speaking to each other for days, they were generally comfortable in each other's company. They were, she'd go so far as to say, genuinely fond of each other, so she took him as a lover. She'd thought at the time that she just wanted to...make sure. She knows now she'd already been sure, and there had been nothing in his lackluster, pedestrian performance that would have changed even the most uncertain woman's mind. With the benefit of hindsight, she thinks it was because he struck her as someone who...not didn't judge, exactly, but who was _fair_ in the judging. He didn't look at her and her failure to become enthralled to his masculine technique as evidence of her worthlessness as a human being. When he looked at her, he saw _her_ and judged her at _her_ worth, not at the world's. He wasn't a kind man, he wasn't a good man, but he was a _fair_ man. She'd loved her friend for that, but she'd never watched him sleep.

That had been eons ago, before the War to End All Wars and before she was past caring whether who she was or whom she slept with would ever be accepted. Her friend was long since dead, because War, unlike Justice, is dirty and it doesn't play fair.

And now, she's second-in-command of an organization that may well be the only thing standing between freedom and Hitler, and she has to play the part of chambermaid because that's still the way of the world. She had knocked but received no answer. Since she could hear the unlovely sound of snoring and since it still rankled, even on this bright lovely morning, to be relegated to this task, she'd opened the door fully intending to loudly call out a "Good Morning" to rudely welcome S.O.E.'s guest to the day. Instead, she's standing in the open doorway, watching D.C.S. Foyle sleep for a moment before she'll pulled the door closed again and try knocking harder.

It's far from a pretty sight. He's snoring loud enough to wake the dead, although he somehow manages not to wake himself. His eyelids aren't completely closed, and she can see glistening slivers of the whites of the his eyes. It makes her think of how she's already noticed that he rarely looks anyone in the eye. She does, though. She's spent her whole life looking people in the eye. Very few have been able to look directly back at her and see what's actually there to see, be that her or a reflection of themselves. Foyle can, though. Not much, and not for long, but when he does, he sees everything, and he doesn't look away for the seeing of it. 

But there's more than that. Underneath the shimmer of his eyes, the eyes he keeps moving and shifting so that they rarely settle on another face for long, there is much, much more. On the surface, he's reserve and calm and stiff-upper-lip. Below the surface, in the place where his eyes --- when he shows them --- lead, he's intelligence and cunning and rage against injustice all set to a slow, persistent roil.

Justice is neither sweet nor nurturing, but this man Foyle respects Justice all the same. That respect doesn't make him a kind man. That respect doesn't make him a good man. But that respect does make him a _fair_ man. In this war-torn, dirty and unfair world, what more could anyone hope for any man to be?


End file.
